Extracts
“The JVP drew first blood—of the Left, the security forces and the UNP, in that order. The use of lethal violence on the part of all these entities against the JVP (irrespective of the magnitude) was essentially a reactive violence, a counter violence. The game of political murder was commenced by the JVP…Significantly, the JVP’s first victim was not a representative of the bourgeois state or the Gunasekara UNP which proscribed the JVP, but a radical student activist, with impeccable anti-UNP credentials— Daya Pathirana, the leader of the Independent Students Union (ISU) of the University of Colombo! …

“The Daya Pathirana assassination was a watershed in the JVP’s post-1983 history. It played a key role in deciding the nature and the trajectory of the JVP’s second insurgency.”

Comments are moderated. Please read our submission guidelines before you comment. Comments that do not adhere to the guidelines will be edited or deleted.

I would like to receive further comments to this event by email

Award winning

The PACT concept was recognised by the Society for New Communications Research, a global think tank dedicated to the advanced study of emerging modes of communication, with an award for its innovative use of new media. For more information about the Society and the awards click here.

Turning points

Feature

This 30 minute documentary is a collection of young Sri Lankan voices, speaking on their experiences of conflict and their ideas for moving forward. It is from the first phase of an ongoing project carried out by the Poverty and Conflict (PAC) programme at the Centre for Poverty Analysis.

With over 25 years of civil war coming to a close, an entire generation of young people now has the chance to experience relative peace. But what does this mean for people who have grown up only knowing war?

PACT team commenting on October 1990 The citizen journalism site Groundviews has this commentary on the recent establishment of a Citizen’s Commission, set up by The Law & Society Trust (LST) together with the Community Trust…

prashan commenting on 1953 Hemaka, I think the point you responded to, and your response speak to the purpose of creating this timeline of encouraging debate on various contested historical events. Some do indeed…

hemaka dissanayake commenting on 1953 While I have no doubt that their were genuine cases of discrimination against tamils in Sri Lanka, I find this ‘colonization mania’ of Tamil politicians unjust. Firstly, there is overwhelming…

Namil commenting on 1888 What do the modern intellectuals say about the ethnic difference among Tamil speaking Muslims and Tamil speaking Hindu/Christians? I mean, do Muslims belong to the Tamil minority or not?…

Sunil Bastian commenting on 3 October 2001 I am not that enthusiastic about talk of resurrecting the Constitutional Council because it amounts to tinkering with the presidential system, instead of questioning it fundamentally. When such powerful institutions…

prashan commenting on 28 May 2009 The resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, absolving the Sri Lankan government of any complicity in human rights abuses during the final stages of the war, the confirmation of…

"PACT is a must for any researcher on our conflict and is one of those sites that really should be put as a shortcut on the desktops of PCs in libraries and cyber-cafes, so that people actually get to know of it and use it. PACT is a historical narrative that comes alive through new media," Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace), 17 May 2008Continue reading...